Smoking Chili Media

Digital Marketing Agency in London

Features

In depth analysis of the latest online marketing trends, tips and advice:

What you need to do before you pitch the press

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Building contacts in the press is a wonderful thing even for the smallest business owner. To be able to build a name for yourself by being the “go to guy/gal” on a given niche ensures exposure, backlinks to your website and, more importantly, a level of celebrity that you can leverage to your advantage.

This is why we always encourage our clients to be willing to speak with journalists whenever we can collectively build such relationships.

But I’m too small for journalists to care about

A lot of the time, however, clients seem to think they are “too small” for the journalists to be interested in. Nonsense. If you are an expert in your field, and if the story is appropriate, then journalists will take an interest.

The following article by a PR specialist is a case in point.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249466
In it the writer asks clients to think from the journalists side of the table and prepare answers to the following questions:

  1. Why is my story relevant?
  2. Why is it relevant now?
  3. Why me?

So with the first you need to put yourself in the journalists shoes and argue the case as to how your story is relevant and INTERESTING to that journalists reader base. After all a magazine, blog or newspaper only retains readers if they read stories they are interested in. So look at who you’re pitching, who their readers are and work the angle that way.

For the second issue of why your story is relevant now, you need to look at the news and conversation happening in the market and tap into it. Is your story seasonal? Is there something going on in the news that allows you to give insight?

Finally, when it comes to “why me” you need to have some short bio prepared templates that you can quickly amend and have ready to send. Make sure to name check other media appearances so your “expert” credentials are clear but don’t over do it. Something nice and succinct in a paragraph or 2 is all that is needed… the journalist really doesn’t need your CV!

Practice makes perfect

When we first started helping clients with media appearances way back when, like anything it was a learning curve but practice made perfect. You have to be positive and pitch and look at your own story from the outside to find ways to make it compelling and interesting. That’s why working with someone like us is worthwhile so we can listen objectively.

I remember one client who was so closed about his knowledge and experience it was like pulling teeth because he thought he was boring. The more we pulled on the thread of his story suddenly this whole web of intrigue and incredible anecdotes came out.

He was so humble he thought none of it was interesting, but for us we were literally gripped because we realised we were in the presence of someone who really did think differently about life and had done something about it in his product R&D.

That story needed telling and we were able to do it once we’d got him to look back at it from the outside. Needless to say the journalists we contacted were equally enamoured.

So the lesson is don’t think your history is too boring, your knowledge and expertise not worth shouting about. And definitely don’t think media is beyond you for the media are just people… you just need to learn how to talk their language!

 

How I Manage 5 Kids and a Growing Business

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Some interesting advice in the following article for all you entrepreneur’s out there desperately trying to balance a family life with the never ending demands of running a small business. The author is a fellow entrepreneur raising 5 children.

His many tips involve compromise and include:

  1. How that then influences the risks he takes on the business front,
  2. Why you shouldn’t work from home because of the need for separate work/life places (or else work always takes over when working from home as I can definitely atest to), and
  3. Why you should always make solid, sacred time with your kids.

Pretty simple ideals to follow but as we all know, work can often simply take over. That said some of these tips are definitely worth reading through as there are a couple here I want to try and retake on board myself:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249441

Why can’t I just buy backlinks to help me rank on Google?

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We recently took a call from a prospective client in the Hammersmith area of London and the client asked why can’t I just buy backlinks in order to rank on Google? The short answer to that is because Google will one day catch up with you trying to manipulate your search rankings.

It is not worth the potential damage to your business to do such things. It’s not worth it because that link will always have to be paid for and that you are always likely to get caught.

You need natural links

You need to build a natural content marketing program where you produce the best quality content that actively engages and helps your prospects and ensures that you build a large social media following.

In order for your content to then be shared, that same money that you would otherwise pay to have a link, and which could potentially put your company in jeopardy if repeated on a number of occasions will, if used for the content marketing side, actually deliver results that will never endanger your business.

That is why we always say just think how you can help your prospects. It’s not a case of giving the whole game away. Nobody’s expecting you to reveal the magic source, the magic ingredient.

You can simply point people in the right direction and generate good will in the process. Let them solve a problem through those simple actions as a result of you sharing your knowledge and expertise and people will place trust in you.

They will not place trust in you if they come to your website and you are not able to demonstrate that same expertise because you have purchased backlinks from other sites and ended up in number one place on Google without the prerequisite skills or expertise to help them.

Then they come into your website and you’re not able to demonstrate that you can help them. It’s just not a win-win situation. It’s going to always place your business at risk.

Always build links naturally through social media and relationship marketing.

You need to build links naturally. Google are not playing games, they don’t care about your business. Your business will never be too big to fail.

Countless, large multinational corporations have fallen foul of Google for this very reason and if Google didn’t care about them and reducing their natural search results, do you really think they care about you? Do you really think you’d have an argument in court against them? No, not in the slightest.

That is why the long term is all about building natural links and a natural social media following. Build, spend your time and resources building relationships with other bloggers, with journalists, with PR people, these things pay dividends in the long run.

Paying for a link to try and get some short-term win will have massive repercussions in the long run for you and your website and business. It’s just not worth that risk and we would never advise any client to ever pay for a link.

75% of Marketers Are Using Influencer Marketing

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A good read here in Adweek about why more and more marketers think influencer marketing is an important tool in the locker. It’s a technique we’ve followed for years.

It basically entails finding who have the most influence in your niche and building relationships with them that work for both parties.

These aren’t false friendships but truly strategic relationships based on a quid pro quo basis that often end up in genuine friendship. It’s a win win for all involved.

Still not convinced? Go and read the following report and see if that helps:
http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/report-75-of-marketers-are-using-influencer-marketing/628211

Online Content Marketing Strategy – How To Plan A Winning Campaign

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We received an email question from a prospective client last week and they asked if we could explain what a robust online content marketing strategy would entail? Well, in a nutshell, content marketing is where you produce content for your website and social channels and then promote it.

You should aim to create enough high-quality content, at a large enough scale, at the cheapest cost possible, in order to build an active social media following and wide sales funnel. And that’s really how you win the race.

Quality + Low Cost = Scale!

online content marketing strategy in action

An Online Content Marketing Strategy should put humans first – not Google!

You’re creating content for humans first. It is not about trying to get to the top of Google by manipulating Google in any way.

It’s about trying to add value to your potential customer base. That means genuinely helping people with their everyday questions, frequently asked questions, questions that you come into contact with when customers call you.

The benefit is that if you do it right, you often end up at the top of Google as a result anyway.

It’s essential to display how you can help them progress from A to B to C. You want to create a great deal of goodwill in your market and with your prospects, so that other blogs, other news organizations and prospects share your content to the wider world using social media.

Whether that be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, whatever it is, whatever platform, its vitally important that your content not only gets indexed by Google but is shared and is very useful to your potential customer base.

Give your prospects transformational content

That is why we always advise clients to create content from the perspective of what helps and serves their prospects the best. What is it that you can help them with right now that is going to provide them with a transformational change?

Now, that may seem sound like a pretty abstract concept but it’s very simple. It’s a case of demonstrating to your prospects that you can help them get from A to B with some very simple steps.

It can be as simple as solving a very simple problem that they have. An example of that might be a technical problem with their website.

An Example Of A Quality Online Content Marketing Strategy In Action

We work with a wonderful website development agency who do a great job of sharing high quality content for free everyday. They solve the many problems that come with standard WordPress themes.

And through that they generate enormous goodwill because a user will see that content, they will see a blog post for example, they will see a video and they’ll go through that content and solve the actual problem that they’ve been experiencing.

After that they will look further into the blog. They may come across another problem they are having, have it solved and so on and so forth. And through this process of discovering new content and using it to solve real world problems, the website development agency builds trust with those prospects.

They are demonstrating, for free, very simple solutions to problems that will have caused frustrating problems for those prospects for quite some time.

Therefore, through that building of trust, the user is moving along the sales funnel and starting to invest an element of trust in this company.

It doesn’t take much from that point onwards for the company to then make a sale because they have already demonstrated their expertise, they have built up goodwill and rapport and through that, the prospect is therefore much more likely to purchase something.

Once someone is on your site, you can get them in your sales funnel

Now, with that content, obviously that is part of the sales funnel. When it is shared out through social media maybe by other blogs, blog publishers are seeing this content and wanting to inform their users base about it.

That then creates an added bonus which is effectively to help with your Google rankings and overall traffic because Google follows the links and humans click on the social media links and go through to the content.

At that point they’re in a very broad sales funnel from that site. In addition, the backlinks from the combined social media and other blogs writing about your content are all indicating to Google that this content is of value. That this site is adding value, that this site is able to solve people’s problems.

In Conclusion

Now that’s a very generalized explanation of an online content marketing strategy and obviously there’s a lot more that goes into it. However, the above summary hopefully explains why really excellent, high value content can be one of the main generators of improving your search engine results.

In the process you will generate trust in your market with your prospects and develop an engaged and very large social media presence in whatever niche you operate.

Read More:

Why can’t I just buy backlinks to help me rank on Google?

The Best Business Networking Technique Is Simply Making a Connection

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Nobody likes a fake. I mean come on, who really does? Don’t you prefer genuine people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say and vice versa. That is the natural way to make a connection in both personal and business life.

Yet so many people turn up to networking meet ups with the sole intention of either handing out as many business cards as possible in a whirl wind of spin and be gone or are the type who, upon realising the person they are talking to isn’t an actual direct sales prospect, try to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible and move on.

You know the type “Oh is that the time”, “Oh excuse me for a moment, I see my friend” or the classic “that’s great, that’s great OK well nice meeting you Darren, I mean David, er, bye”.

This despite some of the most important business relationships coming from simply being genuine with people. They may not be your prospect but they will no someone who will be, and they will know someone who will be and so on and so forth.

By being genuine and yourself (and not the snake) with such people, you stand a much better chance of building solid relationships and a referral business.

It all comes back to doing good onto others. Reciprocity as we call it in marketing. What works offline also works online.

Read more about it in this article in Entreprenuer mag:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251485

It’s the personal touch stupid!

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OK so the above title is not quite Bill Clinton level “It’s the economy stupid” political sloganeering, but it still rings true for small businesses online. Do you ever ask yourself what makes a small business stand out? Why customers remain loyal in the face of price undercutting from the big boys?

Well it really comes down to your value add and the personal experience dealing with a small business brings. We all know that if we complain to the big behemoth in the sky then really the person at the end of the line at the call centre really doesn’t give a rats ass.

Whereas the small business owner takes any kind of complaint or criticism to heart as they know reputation, both the businesses and their’s personally, is on the line and they need to do something about it.

Project the personal touch

It’s the same online. You need to project the personal touch to your customers and not hide behind the faceless identity making yourself seem bigger than you are. It’s about crafting a story that is both honest and genuine so you connect with the customers you want.

So whether that me through blogging, social networking, the photos you take or the videos you share, it’s vitally important that your personality be front and centre as the new prospect navigates the information about your company.

It was actually the following article that got me reflecting on this as this has always been the advise we give to our SME clients. Take a read and let me know in the comments section what you think:

http://yodleinsights.com/show-the-softer-side-of-your-small-biz/

Is the Twitter 140 Character Limit About to Change?

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So it looks like the magic 140 character limit on Twitter is about to change. Whilst it’s still unofficial, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the powers that be are looking into giving special dispensation to users to extend some tweets to more than 140 characters.

Will this ultimately change the nature of the beast? After all, if you want full commentary pieces you go to a full blog rather than a micro blogging platform.

That said, a little leeway to periodic “I’ve got more to say on the subject” style tweets could be healthy for debate and I for one would back the move so long as it is limited in user frequency. Watch this space.

Read in full here:
http://smallbiztrends.com/2015/10/twitter-140-character-limit.html